The Other as Mirror:
Scriptural Reasoning and the Hermeneutics of Ibn
Al-Arabi
Ahmed Afzaal,
Drew University
This commentary is a tentative attempt to figure
out how Scriptural Reasoning might work within a
Qur'anic universe, in light of some of the remarks
made by this year's learned contributors. In making
this attempt, I will be constantly referring to the
hermeneutics of Shaykh Muhyiddin Ibn Al-Arabi
(1165-1240 CE), who was an unusual figure in the
Islamic tradition in view of his extraordinary
spiritual genius and his wide-ranging influence
throughout the Muslim world.[1] What follows is neither
a very accurate nor exhaustive rendering of Ibn
Al-Arabi's hermeneutics, but my own interpretation of
how some of his views might help us in applying the
insights of Scriptural Reasoning to the study of the
Qur'an; the rest of this commentary is devoted to
applying Qur'anic reasoning to the issue of
"ruptures" as introduced by Ellen Davis.
Thinking of Scripture: Reflection and
Listening
Alon
Goshen-Gottstein has identified two distinct but
interrelated stages in approaching Scripture, which
he calls "thinking of" and "thinking with" Scripture.
The first stage "involves the mind, discernment and
critical thinking in an attempt to understand
Scripture for what it is." This stage is "primarily
an intellectual effort," but it also includes "an
effort of listening, involving the heart…." The
second stage involves the development of an
understanding that shapes the lives of the readers,
engaging their wills, minds, and hearts, structuring
their thought through which they know reality,
guiding and directing them through their lives.
In an attempt to transpose these insights into the
Islamic framework, I found it useful to divide the
first stage into two modes — Reflection Mode and
Listening Mode — a distinction that seems to be
implicit in Prof. Goshen-Gottstein's description. In
doing so, I am not implying any particular sequence
or relative privilege; on the contrary, I believe one
has to move constantly, to and fro, between these two
modes while carrying out the complex task of
"thinking of" Scripture. I hope that this division
could help in partially dealing with the problem
created by the excess baggage of history, tradition,
and modern methodologies that scholars must carry and
that tend to "obscure the spiritual sense of
Scripture." I am suggesting that it may be possible
to try and restrict the negative effects of this
excess baggage only to the Reflection Mode, and to
primarily use the Listening Mode for gaining the
Scripture's "spiritual sense." While making this
suggestion, I am wondering whether it is even
possible to separate the two modes in practice!
In the Reflection Mode, we scrutinize the text,
examining it as an object of our gaze. We explore the
linguistic, etymological, and grammatical issues; we
locate the text in history and in the sociocultural
context of its revelation; we draw upon the
resources, opinions, and interpretations of the past.
We try not to make the legacy of the tradition a part
of the Scripture itself, recognizing that while this
legacy often enriches the meaning of the text, it is
not identical with the text, does not share its
sanctity, and can easily eclipse its inherent
possibilities. In this mode, we use all analytical
and interpretive tools that we may find at our
disposal.[2]
In the Listening Mode, we expose ourselves to
Divine words in a state of humble receptivity. We
open up our hearts to welcome the majesty and
sweetness of Scripture, and instead of questions,
doubts, suspicions, or concerns, we allow only
affirmation and acceptance to emerge from our hearts
as the only appropriate response to Divine speech. We
listen faithfully, prayerfully, and with full
attention, allowing the letters and sounds of the
Scripture to surround and overwhelm us, to permeate
our own beings or to make us part of its universe. In
this mode, we let the Scripture do the work of
awakening within us a dormant consciousness and a
forgotten awareness of God's presence.[3]
Admittedly, these two modes exist in tension with
each other; yet the tension, while difficult to
negotiate, contains within itself the possibility of
giving birth to a self-conscious and post-critical
faith that may otherwise be unachievable. If this
tension could be creatively used then it might be
possible — I hope — that "our vocation as scholars"
would "ultimately facilitate[s]" rather than
"hinder[s] our spiritual lives."
These two modes of "thinking of" Scripture roughly
correspond to the two ways of approaching the Divine
in the Islamic tradition. These have been discussed
by Ibn Al-Arabi in considerable detail, who shows
that both of these ways find their justification in
the Qur'an itself. The first is the perspective of
tanzih, which focuses on the incomparability
and utter transcendence of God and is associated with
such Divine names as Majestic, Subjugating, Wrathful,
Exalted, Independent, Holy, Glorified, and King; the
second is the perspective of tashbih, which
focuses on God's similarity to and immanence in
creation, and is associated with such Divine names as
Beautiful, Compassionate, Near, Loving, Forgiving,
and Merciful. Both ways of knowing are necessary
because each is only relatively valid, and exclusive
dependence on any one of them causes human beings to
fall into error, confusion, and ignorance. For Ibn
Al-Arabi, these perspectives do not allow the human
beings to have any knowledge of God's ultimate
Essence, which is forever inaccessible to all
creatures, but only of the way in which God chooses
to disclose and reveal Himself through His attributes
and names.
Ibn Al-Arabi associates the perspective of
tanzih with rational, critical, and discursive
faculties, and the perspective of tashbih with
imagination and unveiling. Reason tends to ignore the
concrete embodiments of reality and continuously
indulges in abstractions; with every gain in
philosophical sophistication, God is increasingly
pushed away from and out of creation. While the
perspective of tanzih is necessary and valid —
God is the "beyond-and-beyond" and the "wholly other"
— it only tells half of the story. Ibn Al-Arabi
points out that one needs imagination and unveiling
in order to experience that God is immanent in and
similar to creation, and that God encounters us in
concrete experiences, embodied existence, and
material realities.
While the perspective of tanzih fiercely
maintains the distinction between Creator and
creation, between signs and the Signified, between
symbols and the Symbolized, the perspective of
tashbih obliterates these distinctions and
helps us recognize the presence of the Creator in the
creation, the presence of the Signified in the signs,
and the presence of the Symbolized in the symbols.
Where the perspective of tanzih finds
multiplicity, the perspective of tashbih
encounters unity. The Qur'an, for its part, clearly
employs both perspectives, often in close proximity
to each other, e.g., "…there is nothing whatever like
unto Him [tanzih] and He is the One who hears
and sees [tashbih]" (42:11).
In the process of "thinking of" Scripture, using
the Reflection Mode can be seen as involving the
perspective of tanzih while using the
Listening Mode as involving the perspective of
tashbih. When we approach the Scripture in the
Reflection Mode, we rely on our rational and critical
faculties and hope to achieve abstraction, analysis,
explanation, and differentiation. When we approach
the Scripture in the Listening Mode, we rely on our
spiritual and emotional faculties and hope to achieve
relationality, synthesis, understanding, and
unity.
The very fact that the perspectives of
tanzih and tashbih lead to results that
are mutually exclusive and contradictory indicates
that there must be a third, higher level of knowledge
that transcends both of them. Ibn Al-Arabi would not
want us to get trapped in either the Reflection or
the Listening Mode. He would want us to employ both
of these modes in a manner appropriate to them, but
then to strive for tahqiq (verification) by
attempting to transcend all perspectives without
rejecting any of them. Ibn Al-Arabi believes that
reaching the level of tahqiq — a stage of
human perfection where one is no longer constrained
by the limitations of different perspectives — is
entirely dependent on God's grace.
How can all this help us in approaching the Song
of Songs? I agree with Prof. Ellen Davis that the
rabbis who included it in the Biblical canon knew
what they were doing; they clearly saw the religious
meaning of this poem that many of us moderns are not
able to perceive. It is possible that at least some
modern difficulties in interpreting the Song of Songs
as a religious text have stemmed from an
epistemological imbalance. In more ways than one,
modernity is characterized by an emphasis on the
perspective of tanzih and relative disregard
for the perspective of tashbih. That is to
say, too much reliance on rational abstractions and
less on concrete experience may be at the root of why
a poetic expression of erotic love seems to us to
have nothing to do with our experience of God.
The problem seems to be grounded in what can
perhaps be called the most characteristic feature of
Enlightenment rationalism. In general, that
rationalism elevated the capacities of human reason
over everything that it viewed as non-reason. In the
process, aspects of human experience that were seen
as other than rational came to be treated with a
certain amount of disdain. This epistemological
arrogance of rationalism attempted to deprive the
human beings of the validity of the full range of
their capacities for knowing and experiencing
reality, including those that are embedded within the
human body and in human emotions.[4]
In this context, the prominence given in the
Qur'anic discourse to the material and sensual world
deserves our attention. The Qur'an describes the
universe as having been created "in truth" (e.g.,
15:85; 44:39) just as it describes God's revelation
as having been sent down "in truth" (e.g., 4:105;
17:105). Based on his understanding of the Qur'an,
Ibn Al-Arabi views the constituents of the material
cosmos as so many Divine words whose ultimate meaning
is none other than God. The Qur'anic emphasis on
bodily resurrection alludes to the fact that the body
is an integral part of the human self.[5] This
attention to the material and sensual world is a
feature of the Qur'anic discourse that causes
consternation among those who would rather have an
abstract and disembodied religiosity — as if God
reveals Himself only in the spirit and not in the
body. For Ibn Al-Arabi, human beings encounter God
not just in abstract theology, but also — and much
more frequently — in the concrete, embodied, and
material aspects of creation.
This implies that concrete human experience is one
of the most accessible arenas where God can be found,
and this includes the realm of sexuality and erotic
love. But in order to find God in the arena of
concrete human experience, the perspective of
tashbih is needed rather than that of
tanzih. It is only through the perspective of
tashbih that we can experience the similarity
and comparability between our yearnings for a human
beloved and our longings for God; between the pain of
our separation from a human beloved and the torment
of our alienation from God; between the pleasure of
our closeness to a human beloved and the joy of our
intimacy with God. Indeed, anyone who has ever been
in love can hardly deny the reality of Hell and
Paradise! As Omid
Safi demonstrates, in the Islamic tradition these
experiences have been most eloquently expressed in
poetry and by the Sufis, i.e., in a medium that is
supremely congenial to the perspective of
tashbih and by individuals who have made the
best use of this perspective.[6]
The sacred nature and religious significance of
erotic love and sexual union have been recognized
often enough in the history of religions, though
certainly not in all forms of religiosity. Ibn
Al-Arabi, for instance, believes that the greatest
occasion for experiencing God's self-disclosure in
this world is to be found in the act of sexual union,
which gives a foretaste of the joy of human intimacy
with the Divine in the Paradise.
Thinking with Scripture: The Word becomes
Flesh
The second stage of Scriptural Reasoning is
"thinking with" Scripture. Once we have taken the
preliminary steps to comprehend the Scripture in both
the Reflection and the Listening Modes, we are — if
God so wills — on our way to learn how to "think
with" Scripture, i.e., how to allow the wisdom of the
Scripture to shape our wills, minds, and hearts so
that our intentions, thoughts, and feelings work in
harmony with that wisdom. Both "thinking of" and
"thinking with" Scripture are processes that must
undergo constant self-correction, most importantly in
light of what the Scripture itself has to say about
these processes. In addition, "thinking with"
Scripture has a reflexive influence on "thinking of"
Scripture; the Islamic tradition has often recognized
that knowledge of God is a function of obeying
God.
The process of "thinking with" Scripture appears
to be one of internalizing and assimilating the
Scripture, or, alternatively, getting immersed in the
world of the Scripture. In the Islamic tradition, the
ultimate model of complete internalization of, or
immersion in, the Qur'an is provided by Prophet
Muhammad himself, whose behavior and character was
described as being identical with the Qur'an itself.
This remains the ideal for all Muslims — the goal of
embodying the word of God in the world of flesh.
Among other things, learning to "think with"
Scripture means learning to align our own reasoning
style in harmony with that of the Qur'an. The least
that can be said about the Qur'anic style of
reasoning is that reading it exclusively from the
perspective of tanzih or only from the
perspective of tashbih is not going to take
the reader very far in the direction of knowledge.
The Qur'anic style of reasoning may be seen as a
dialectic between the perspective of tanzih
and that of tashbih. For every thesis, it
seems that an antithesis exists somewhere in the
Qur'an; yet this does not indicate the presence of a
contradiction, a defect from which the Qur'an claims
to be absolutely free (4:82). For instance, the
Qur'an emphasizes retributive justice while
simultaneously stressing forgiveness in the same
context (42:39-43); following the logic of the
Qur'an, this cannot be a contradiction. It is, in
fact, a nuanced interplay between the contradictory
demands of tanzih and tashbih
respectively. Through this dialectical style of
reasoning, the Qur'an seems to be giving an implicit
invitation and a tacit challenge to rise above the
perspectives of both tanzih and
tashbih. This extraordinary feat — which is
what "thinking with" Scripture is perhaps all about
in the Qur'anic context — is impossible to achieve
without first understanding and accepting both of
these perspectives as correct and valid in their own
right.
Primordial Ruptures: Beyond Identity and
Distinction
This leads us to one of the most important
insights found in this year's contributions, which is
Davis' recognition that the Song of Song indicates
the possibility of healing in three primary spheres
of relationship: the ruptures between God and
humanity, between man and woman, between humanity and
nonhuman nature. I will attempt to apply the Qur'anic
style of reasoning suggested above to the question of
these ruptures as a test case.
While the Qur'an recognizes the presence of these
and other ruptures, it does not always treat them in
negative terms. In explaining a number of situations
characterized by self-other duality, the Qur'an seems
to indicate that in each case separation or rupturing
has followed a primordial state of unity, implying
that these ruptures are creative in their effect.
According to the Qur'an, the creation of man and
woman came about out of a single and apparently
non-gendered entity (4:1); the diversity of religious
communities took place due to the fragmentation of an
originally unified community (10:19); the
multiplicity of races and ethnicities owes itself to
differentiation in the progeny of a single human
family (49:13); the separation of human beings from
non-human nature took place when God breathed His
spirit into a being that was created out of earthly
matter (15:28-29). For Ibn Al-Arabi, more fundamental
than all of these ruptures is the primordial
polarization of Reality into God and the cosmos.
From the perspective of tanzih, the
differentiation between the two members in each
self-other duality is complete and irreconcilable.
From the perspective of tashbih, the two
members in each duality represent two aspects of the
same reality, and are in fact inseparable — one might
even say indistinguishable — from each other. In
other words, in every instance of what is experienced
as a self-other duality, each member contains a part
of the other within itself, as if the two were
ontologically interlocked and interdependent.
Consequently, when one looks at the other, one finds
not only the other but also one's own self;
similarly, when one looks at one's own self, one
finds not only oneself but also the other. This
implies that one needs one's other in order to know
one's own self and to satisfy the desire of being
known by the other, both of which are prerequisites —
at least in the case of human beings — for fully
becoming oneself.
I refer to the non-Qur'anic Divine saying that
Safi has also
quoted, according to which God said: "I was a Hidden
Treasure so I loved to be known; therefore I created
the creation so I may be known." This Divine saying
locates the cause of the coming into existence of the
cosmos in God's loving to be known by His "others."
For Ibn Al-Arabi and his followers in the Islamic
tradition, there is only one Reality, one true Being,
which is identical with Divine Essence. To say that
"there is no god but God" is to say that "there is no
real but the Real." From the perspective of
tanzih, God created the cosmos so that He
could be known by His creatures; from the perspective
of tashbih, however, these created "others"
have no existence of their own because there is only
one true Being. The status of these created beings is
ambiguous at best, as they hang somewhere between
Absolute Being and sheer nothingness. Because of this
ambiguity — which makes everything God/not God at the
same time — the "others" act act as mirrors of/for
God, making God "known" by reflecting His attributes
to each other and also back to God Himself.
The God-cosmos "rupture" is therefore supremely
creative; it needs to be experienced, appreciated,
and celebrated. For Ibn Al-Arabi, every event and
entity in the created universe represents the
self-disclosure of God through which God makes
Himself "known." This phenomenon of self-disclosure
is precisely what the Qur'an refers to in terms of
ayaat (signs) of God found in the created
universe as well as within the human self. From the
perspective of tanzih, creation consists of
signs that signify none other than the Creator; from
the perspective of tashbih, the Creator is
found within these signs which have no existence
apart from what they signify. These two views
apparently contradict each other but do not cancel
each other out; the presence of a third perspective,
that of tahqiq, indicates that the ontological
relationship between God and the cosmos actually goes
beyond both distinction and identity.
In this context, the God-human rupture cannot be
an existential separation but primarily a consequence
of "forgetfulness" on the part of the human being.
God is too close to the human being for this rupture
to be an existential separation; it is precisely due
to this intimacy that forgetting God directly leads
to forgetting one's own self. The Qur'an has warned:
"…and be not like those who became oblivious of God,
and therefore God caused them to be oblivious of
their own selves…" (59:19). The reverse is also true;
it has been well-recognized in the Islamic tradition
that knowledge of God is dependent on knowledge of
self; in fact, the two are actually one. The Islamic
tradition attributes to Prophet Muhammad the saying
"he who knows himself knows his Lord," but the same
idea is also found in different forms within the
Christian tradition.[7] The close relationship
between the knowledge of self and the knowledge of
God is explained by the fact that human beings have
been created in the "image of God," which implies
that while every creature or phenomenon in the
created cosmos reflects a limited configuration of a
few attributes of God, the human being has the unique
potential of reflecting all of God's attributes in
their fullness, and thereby becoming the best
possible mirrors of God through which He might become
"known." The Qur'anic command "Dye yourselves in the
color of God…" (2:138) and the prophetic saying
"Produce in yourselves the attributes of God" point
to the same duty of striving towards the fullness of
human perfection. According to Ibn Al-Arabi, each
human being has the potential to achieve this
perfection by becoming Al-Insan Al-Kamil; the
actualization of this potential, however, is
dependent entirely on God's grace.
Consequently, a rupture in the God-human
relationship implies human beings' forgetting of
their own potential, which is the same calamity as
forgetting God. To the extent that human beings know
their own selves — i.e., the highest potential with
which they have been endowed — they come to know God
in whose image they have been created; and the extent
to which they come to know God, they are able to
realize their potential by approximating the ideal of
human perfection.[8] The degree of existential
reality that human beings can achieve is a function
of the degree of their knowledge of God and self. The
gradual realization of their potential makes human
beings increasingly unique in the hierarchy of being,
so that — in an apparent paradox — their identity
with and distinction from God will go on increasing
indefinitely.[9]
A similar scenario might apply to the rupture
between man and woman. Human beings standing on the
opposite sides of the gender line view each other as
different from themselves. In seeing each other as
different, they are absolutely correct from the
perspective of tanzih; however, the
perspective of tashbih establishes the
identity and essential similarity between them. All
unjust situations of domination and abuse in gender
relations result from an overemphasis on the
perspective of tanzih and a disregard for that
of tashbih. Neither man nor woman is able to
achieve human perfection without actualizing the
full range of human potentialities, i.e.,
qualities and attributes that are designated as
"masculine" as well as those that are believed to be
"feminine," in appropriate proportion. While it takes
the perspective of tanzih to realize and
foster one's potentialities that are believed to
correspond to one's own gender, it requires the
perspective of tashbih to do the same for
those that are thought to correspond to the opposite
gender. Yet, the presence of a third perspective,
that of tahqiq, indicates that the ontological
relationship between man and woman actually goes
beyond both distinction and identity.
Human beings see nature as totally different from
themselves, which enables them to objectify it as an
inert mass of matter to be used for their own
benefits. This is the perspective of tanzih,
which is correct and useful to the extent that it has
given rise to the numerous desirable aspects of
science and technology. Too much emphasis on the
perspective of tanzih, however, is responsible
for the unbridled abuse of nature and a global
ecological crisis that threatens the every existence
of life on earth. It is only through the perspective
of tashbih that human beings can come to
acknowledge, in a meaningful and effective manner,
that they themselves are part of nature and are
inseparable from it. Whatever they do to nature, they
do to themselves. Once again, the presence of a third
perspective, that of tahqiq, indicates that
the ontological relationship between human beings and
nonhuman nature goes beyond both distinction and
identity.
Consequently, human beings cannot become truly
human without appreciating the opposite gender and
the nonhuman nature, just as they cannot become truly
human without knowing God — in terms of both
distinction and identity.
[1] Ibn Al-Arabi has also been a
controversial figure in Islam, revered and criticized
with almost equal zeal. Much of this controversy can
be traced to the inherent complexity of his writings;
unable to decipher him directly, opponents have often
formed superficial and incorrect views based on
misleading and sometimes hostile secondary sources.
While this tendency crept into early Orientalist
approaches, more recent Western scholarship on Ibn
Al-Arabi is yielding increasingly refined
interpretations of his oeuvre, as seen in the works
by Henry Corbin, Toshihiko Izutsu, Michel
Chodkeiwicz, William Chittick, Sachiko Murata, James
Morris, Claude Addas, and others. In writing this
essay, I have relied mainly on Chittick's
translations and commentaries of Ibn Al-Arabi's
works.
[2] I believe that the Reflection
Mode, in at least some of its manifestations, comes
rather close to the Qur'anic sense of
tadabbur, tafakkur, and
ta'aqqul, all of which imply the use of
intellectual capacities to gain an understanding of
the Scripture (e.g., 2:242; 4:82, 10:24; 12:2, 16:44;
47:24).
[3] The Listening Modes appears
to be close to the Qur'anic sense of
tadhakkur, which implies a process of
remembering a forgotten truth, particularly through
the Scripture (e.g., 2:221; 28:43; 39:28; 54:17).
[4] Cf., Spretnak, Charlene.
1997. The Resurgence of the Real: Body, Nature,
and Place in a Hypermodern World. New York:
Routledge.
[5] Cf., Nasr, Seyyed Hossein.
1996. Religion and the Order of Nature. New
York: Oxford University Press, pp. 235-292.
[6] Contemporary Islamic
revivalists and Muslim modernists share a tendency
with early Orientalists that views Sufism as a
foreign introduction in Islam. It may be noted here
that Sufism, as well as the perspective of
tashbih that it emphasizes, are both Qur'anic
in their origin and legitimacy. Sufism does not
contain more foreign influences than what is the case
with classical tafsir; the mere presence of
non-Islamic influences does not make either of them a
foreign introduction in Islam.
[7] Similar sayings are found in
Clement of Alexandria, Gregory of Nyssa, Ambrose,
Evagrius, Augustine, etc.
[8] Ibn Al-Arabi's notion of the
perfect human being seems to be identical with the
Qur'anic notion of khalifah (God's vicegerent
on earth); both should be seen as possibilities or
potentialities, not as a right that one possesses
simply on account of being born a Homo
sapience.
[9] I am not sure if Ibn Al-Arabi
would agree with this interpretation of human
destiny. In twentieth century Islam, the most
eloquent proponent of self-affirming mysticism has
been Muhammad Iqbal (1877-1938) who had an ambivalent
relationship with Ibn Al-Arabi. See his Secrets of
the Self, English translation by R. A. Nicholson.
London: MacMillan and Company Ltd., 1920.
© 2003, Society for
Scriptural Reasoning
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